1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive having a disk for use as a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, disk drives such as magnetic disk drives, optical disk drives, etc. have been widely used as external recording devices or image recording devices for computers.
A magnetic disk drive, as a disk drive, generally comprises a casing in the shape of a rectangular box. The casing houses a magnetic disk serving as a magnetic recording medium, a spindle motor serving as a drive means for holding and rotating the magnetic disk, a plurality of magnetic heads for writing information to and reading information from the magnetic disk, a head actuator for movably supporting plural magnetic heads relative to the magnetic disk, a voice coil motor for rotating and positioning the head actuator, and a board unit having arranged thereon a head IC and the like.
A printed circuit board that controls the operations of the spindle motor, voice coil motor, and magnetic heads through the board unit is screwed to the outer surface of the casing. An interface (I/F) connector for connecting the magnetic disk drive to an external device is soldered to an end portion of the printed circuit board.
Described in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2001-210058 is a magnetic disk drive in the form of a thin card which can be loaded into a card slot of a personal computer, for example. The card-shaped magnetic disk drive of this type is required to be made thinner and smaller than a conventional one. To meet this requirement, various components are mounted on a plate-shaped base, a support frame is fixed on the peripheral edge of the base, and a plate-shaped top cover is attached to the support frame. Further, a printed circuit board is arranged on the backside of the base, and an I/F connector on the printed circuit board is positioned and held by means of a dedicated fixing member on the support frame.
Miniaturization of magnetic disk drives these days is being promoted so that they can be used as recording devices for a wider variety of electronic devices, especially for smaller-sized electronic devices. For example, in a magnetic disk drive having housed therein a disk whose diameter is one inch or more, a printed circuit board, which is so arranged as to overlap the surface of a casing, can be made smaller than the area of the casing surface. However, in a magnetic disk drive having housed therein a disk whose diameter is one inch or less, the area of the casing surface on which a printed circuit board is mounted is made small due to miniaturization of a casing. Accordingly, it is required that a printed circuit board be arranged on a casing with approximately the entire casing surface covered thereby. Furthermore, in a small-sized magnetic disk drive, a thinly formed printed circuit board is arranged so as to reduce the thickness of the entire device, which undesirably weakens the device strength.
In such magnetic disk drives, peripheral edge portions of a printed circuit board can be released or detached easily, and when holding the sides of a magnetic disk drive, there is a fear that peripheral edge portions of a printed circuit board may be peeled off or broken. Especially, in miniaturizing magnetic disk drives, it is desired that the number of screw cramp portions on a printed circuit board be small. On the other hand, when the number of screw cramp portions is reduced, it becomes difficult to securely fix a printed circuit board.